Semiotics

Semiotics

Semiotics, or the study of signs (from the Greek semion, a sign), is a scientific, literary, and philosophical discipline derived from the speculations on signification and language of the American pragmatist philosopher C.S. Peirce and the Swiss linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Sausurre. Also known as semiology, semiotics is concerned with the phenomena of signs in all their abundance and variety: letters, images, literary texts, acoustic signals, road signs, verbal signs, gestures, icons, symbols, allegories, corporate logos, indices, hieroglyphs, drawings, natural signs, celestial signs, musical notations, mathematical signs--in short, signifying objects and artifacts of virtually every size, shape, color, and substance.

"And let there be lights in the firmament of heaven . . . and let them be for signs . . . ."

According to the story in Genesis, man's dominion of the world began with an aboriginal act of naming: "and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Semiotics decodes this story (and the related New Testament notion of a divine, primordial logos--i.e., an original all-creating "reason" or "word") as a myth or allegory about the nature and power of language and the origins of semiotics itself. For with the emergence of human language (itself a by-product of the evolution of mind and its unceasing quest for meaning), the entire universe becomes charged with possible significance. Everything becomes a potential sign. "The entire universe," Peirce wrote, "is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs."

In the presence of consciousness, then, even stones, trees, and thunderstorms need no longer be regarded simply as mute objects or brute phenomena. Instead, at any moment they can become active symbols, alive with meaning.

"Signs, signs. . . everywhere a sign."-- "Signs," The Five Man Electrical Band, 1971.

It follows that if signs are eveywhere, then every human activity or cultural pursuit is a potential subject for semiotic investigation (as Roland Barthes has demonstrated with his amusing and revealing analyses of food systems and the fashion industry, and as Umberto Eco has shown in his polymathic novels and theoretical writings). However, the discipline seems particularly well suited to deal with what Barthes himself calls "complex systems" of mass communication--that is, with multimedia messages such as those found in film, advertising, TV, and the Internet; messages that employ an entire orchestration of images, words, and sounds.

As it turns out, semiotics has indeed proven to be an extremely valuable tool for decoding and "deconstructing" multimedia. Hence it has become a vital resource for contending with the nearly non-stop barrage of complex information that is characteristic of today's sign-saturated cultural environment.

Basic Terms and Concepts Like most scientific disciplines, semiotics employs an extensive and ponderous technical jargon. Words like signifier, signified, syntagm, contiguity, intertextuality, interpretant, metalinguistic, sememe, and other linguistic marvels glisten upon the pages of today's semiological journals like the incantations of yesterday's magicians and alchemists. Moreover, because of the discipline's wide utility and enormous intellectual popularity, its vocabulary (when it is not being used carefully and with precision) can be found inflating the style (and often torturing the sense) of academic discourse throughout the university curriculum.

To avoid this problem--especially in a course where we will be applying insights from semiotics only in a very limited and introductory way (primarily as a tool for composing or decomposing multimedia commercial messages and works of art)--it will be helpful to keep the vocabulary short and simple. Here, then, are a few key terms, concepts, and principles:

SIGN The medieval formula is aliquid stat pro aliquo: a sign, that is to say, is "something that stands for something else." Peirce's formulation is more extensive and technically precise: A sign is something that stands to somebody for something in some respect.

More simply: A sign is anything (e.g., a word, image, sound, object, gesture, or substance) that can be used to express a meaning. (Compare Umberto Eco's memorable definition: "A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.")

As traditionally analyzed, a sign consists of two parts: a signifier and a signified.

SIGNIFIER The physical embodiment of a sign; in other words, the actual material form (e.g., a wooden cross, a red light, a checkered flag) in which the sign appears.

SIGNIFIED The concept (or mental content) represented by the signifier.

DENOTATION The explicit or referential meaning of a sign. For example, the name "Hollywood" denotes a section of Los Angeles, long famous as the center of the American movie industry. A logo consisting of a red C in a blue circle denotes the Chicago Cubs National League Baseball team.

CONNOTATION The various social overtones, cultural implications, or emotional meanings associated with a sign. Hence the name "Hollywood" denotes an area of Los Angeles, but connotes such things as glitz, glamor, tinsel, celebrity, and dreams of stardom. The Cubs logo denotes a professional baseball organization, but connotes such things as ballpark sounds, ivied walls, futility, "loveable losers," Ernie Banks, and Harry Caray. (Note: Advertisers, Spin doctors, and PR professionals are particularly interested in managing the connotative meaning of signs.)

"Hold that Sign"

To the discerning spectator, mass cultural events are gala sign-fests, public rituals overflowing with significant pageantry and symbolism. Take a football game, for example: from its coded play-signals and colored and numbered uniforms to its intricate grid of sidelines, goal lines, hash marks, and yardlines, football is a cornucopia of signs. When an official (signified by a black-and-white striped shirt) blows his whistle and throws a yellow flag, he thereby signifies a rules infraction. He may then signify the exact nature of the violation (e.g., off-sides, illegal motion) and indicate the offending team by using a series of hand signals. Baseball games, basketball games, and motor races offer similarly rich spectacles of signification.
Even a traffic jam can be as sign-loaded as it is congested--a multimedia display of beeping horns, scowling visages, flashing brake lights, and waving middle fingers, all in their own raucous way declaring "I'm displeased with this."

CODE Codes are social contracts, sets of rules or conventions that members of a group agree to follow for their mutual benefit or convenience. In semiotics, a code is a set of shared understandings among users about the relationship between signifiers and signifieds.

A cultural group or community can be thought of as a group of people who share a common system of codes. Some examples of commonly used codes are:

Highway codes: a system of signs and symbols for communicating traffic information and regulating the behavior of drivers and pedestrians; includes stoplights, road signs, painted lines, warning signals, barriers, orange cones, turn signals, distress signals, etc.

"Body language": People communicate with their bodies through an entire repertoire of signs--from facial expressions and hand signals to shoulder shrugs and head movements. Posture can speak volumes, as can various swayings, pacings, unconscious nervous habits, and deliberate gestures. Even the proximity (or distance) between speakers in a conversation can signify information about their status and relationship. (As a rule, women converse with their heads together; men stand apart.)

Clothing: In every society, articles of clothing and related accessories (beads, jewelry, headgear, etc.) serve regularly as a type of signifier. This is especially true in cases where the item is worn not so much for practical reasons (e.g., warmth and protection) as for self-expression and display--to make, as we say, a fashion statement.
Furthermore, what holds true for articles of clothing, also generally holds true (at least in consumerist societies) for automobiles, luggage, or any other portable personal items or goods that can be used to signify. In the U.S., for example, we often use so-called status symbols (i.e., goods which in addition to their functional use connote wealth, social position, occupation, marital status, interests, hobbies, group affiliations, and the like) to send information about ourselves (very consciously in most cases) to other members of the community. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that in America virtually everything a person owns, wears, uses, carries, lives with, cares for, displays, or spends money on--from pets to pierced earrings--can be interpreted as a sign.

Pragmatics

Semioticians sometimes divide their field into three areas: 1. Syntactics, which deals with the rules for constructing signs and stringing them together. 2. Semantics, which has to do with the meanings of signs. 3. Pragmatics, which concentrates on the practical uses and effects of signs.

A pragmatic approach to the study of signs--with a particular emphasis on the effects of signs on audiences--can help individuals to communicate more effectively, to analyze media with greater sophistication and critical awareness, and to design and interpret messages more skillfully and with deeper understanding.

Used in this way, semiotics provides some excellent practical guidelines for improving communication (guidelines which, by the way, confirm the similar insights and principles of classical rhetoric and communication theory). Presenters, web-page and document designers, and communicators in general take note:

Beware of semiotic overload. Since everything can be a sign demanding attention and crying out to be interpreted, and since audiences have only limited capacities for paying attention and interpreting signals, it follows that too much information in the form of icons, symbols, sounds, etc., can actually impede rather than facilitate communication.

A sign to the wise . . . This is a corollary of the previous piece of advice and recalls the old rhetorical maxim, a word to the wise is sufficient. In other words, don't feel obliged to repeat or interpret everything or explain everything twice. Most readers, viewers, and listeners are adept at interpretation and will actively try to "make sense" of your message. Your obligation is simply to present that message as clearly, as concisely, and as effectively as you can.

On the other hand, at certain times it is prudent to say something twice--especially in a message environment with lots of noise (e.g., "walkie-talkie" radio) or no opportunity for feedback. In such situations a little redundancy may be vital. Furthermore, as Aristotle once pointed out, some audiences cannot be instructed. Instead, they must be humored, hammered, entertained, inveigled, badgered, and bullied--in a word propagandized--into accepting your version of the truth.

Images and sounds trump words. Is a picture worth a thousand words? It had better be. Because readers and viewers are likely to devote several times as much energy and attention to a picture or image than to surrounding text. A corollary of this principle is, if you're going to include images or sounds in a written message, make sure those images and sounds convey the main point you wish to communicate--for they will have the most immediate, and lasting, impact on the audience.

You can't get (or send) the right message if you don't know the code. Serious communication gaffes frequently occur as a result of misunderstood (or only partly apprehended) codes rather than because of malformed messages. A typo or misspelling can produce confusion or ambiguity: "Did you read today's headlice?" As can slipshod grammar or syntax: "Drive slowly when wet." But ignorance of codes or connotations can lead to equally embarrassing crossed signals. For example, in the U.S. a raised hand with the thumb and index finger forming a circle is a positive signal: "everything's OK." In parts of France the same gesture means "zero"--absolute nullity. In ancient Athens it was considered an obscenity.

Currently, one of the most interesting areas of semiotic interpretation--and misinterpretation-- involves the identification of sexuality. The possibility of misinterpretation arises because most of the codes that signal homosexuality and heterosexuality--and even male and female--in our society (e.g., dress, body language, behavior, speech, mannerisms) have become vague or ambiguous and are easily concealed or counterfeited. As a result, short of a public announcement (e.g., an "outing" in which a person openly declares "I'm gay"), there is simply no foolproof way of identifying an individual's orientation with certainty. Indeed, the ease with which sexual identity clues can be falsely encoded or decoded has made sexual misalliance and "gender-bending" a staple of comedy from the plays of Aristophanes and Shakespeare to the latest Hollywood sex farce (e.g., Tootsie, The Birdcage).

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